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Perry as Thanksgiving Guest?

Perry the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) has surprised us mightily. A shoot has appeared and is growing rapidly. This follows the shortest dormant period so far – the last leaf died down this past summer, and we expected dormancy to last until spring or summer of 2014. It remains to be seen whether this shoot will produce another flowering, or instead produce another leaf. Stay tuned…if it’s an inflorescence, blooming might occur around Thanksgiving. If it’s a leaf, the development will still be a spectacular thing to watch.

I’ll include some photos here of the onset of dormancy and of the initiation of growth, highlighted by Tuan (Tuan Tran, GAC ’13). The progress of dormancy had its own interesting and entertaining moments, so I’ll write a separate blog post on that. We will also be keeping up with progress of the shoot’s growth here. To follow Perry’s growth in real time, check out the Titan Arum Webcam, updated every five minutes. Perry is also on Facebook and posts regularly.

3 Comments

[…] is growing like Jack’s Beanstalk! The new shoot appeared about two weeks into September (see the photo from September 13, scaled to Tuan’s hand), and it was, as of Friday, October 4, approaching 20 inches / 50 centimeters in […]

Patricia, it’s great to hear of your interest. We don’t have a highly accurate prediction of the flowering date, but think that it will probably be some time in early November. One sign that flowering is near is when the two sheaths at the base of the inflorescence fall away. If you look at them right now, you can see that they’re still clasping the stem.